Like this:

Related

16 Comments

Nice comment about Harden. Wrote a quick piece about him (fantasybaseballmacbookpro.blogspot.com) with respect to his game in Tokyo. Luckily, I’m in Japan and didn’t have to wake up at 6AM just to watch the game.

Rich Harden was a target in my drafts for the late rounds but like usual, someone picked him right before me. Cory, always enjoy your commentary on fantasy. Good luck in Tout Wars.

I got Harden as well very late. Sabathia, Harden, Oliver Perez, Randy Johnson, Jeremie Guthrie and Lackey on the DL. Considering I went nearly all offense, I am stoked with my pitching this year. Very 411-ish! Keep up the good work!

mrea197…my preference is to have 1 sheet with my draft strategy and what i am willing to draft in what rounds. second is starters/cloers. third, i usually have a sheet with position players and usually rank them. i usually highlight the positions that are deep and the ones that are shallow.

never been in a live draft with people in the same room. but i think it’s kind of the same. more pressure though.

Thanks for posting the excel sheet. One question though…..what is the difference in the S7 and S30 columns?

As far as what to bring with you, I think a laptop with an excel sheet like Cory’s is ideal, but if you don’t have a laptop, don’t bring TOO much paperwork….ie. a magazine, a top 300 list, a yahoo ADP list, etc. It can be overwhelming.

Cory: Thanks for the spreadsheet, this is great stuff. A number of questions:

1) All spring on the show you talked about how you have been playing with valuation systems. (and always how Santana would show up high no matter what you did.) At some point can you post details of how you went from projections to dollar values? Maybe post that spreadsheet?

2) In the Players tab you have three valuations listed. MLB$ is I assume from the MLB draft kit. Where did PRO$ and P$ come from? (I’m guessing P$ are your values from #1 above)

3)How did you the mechanics of using this spreadsheet work during the auction? My guess is on the players tab, as each player was won you typed in the team name in column C and the winning bid in column D, and then switched to the grid tab to type it in there. Were those indeed the steps that you did during the auction to track things?

Thanks, I got ribbed for just bringing a one sheet with each position listed out separately ranked by my preference and round number I liked them in and a “Top 300″ list. Just curious what other folks brought.

* In the past I would bring a bare minimum of stuff into drafts with me: a grid in which I would fill out each team’s roster (by position) during the draft, and ranked lists of eligible players at each position (with projected auction values for Tout). That’s it… if you have to open a magazine to look up a guy’s stats or whatever, you’re not prepared.

* That said, I’ve been transitioning to using the laptop as I get more and more comfortable with my spreadsheets. I’m fairly good at eyeballing a roster and being able to see strengths and weaknesses, but in high-stakes and high-profile leagues like NFBC and Tout, I like to have detailed projected standings to help track category scarcity during the draft.

* I purposefully left out the pieces I used to convert projected stats to rankings, because I’m not too happy with them yet. I’ll do more tinkering on these in the future and post something down the road. Sorry folks, I don’t want to distribute stuff that I don’t think will help!

* In the NFBC list, ADP was from mockdraftcentral.com the day before the draft; S7 was the ADP for the last seven days of satellite drafts before the draft, and S30 was the last 30 days of satellite drafts. I used these to compare how players were trending and try to get a better feel for who would go when. S30 produced the best correlation with my rankings so that’s what I worked against during the NFBC draft.

* In the Tout spreadsheet, the different dollar values were MLB (from the MLB.com fantasy preview), PROJ (based on my projections) and finally a weighted average, with some customization. These values produced the best correlation with the actual auction results.

For an auction draft I bring my target sheet which you can see typed up in my AL Tout recap. Sam Walker and I were only ones in Tout who used paper. I brought the MLB.com position rankings with dollar values, a printed out spread sheet with composite projected values and a fantasy magazine (rotowire.com’s) mainly for position eligibility. Sam has won Tout before so old school gets it done…….Siano

As a budget analyst, this is the approach I love to see people take. Or rather, all the people who don’t play in my leagues other than myself. Anyhoo, for you Excel people, here’s a ranking formula that accurately handles ties and you can use to generate points the way roto sites like Yahoo do. I used the cell that Cory used to compute rank for batting average on his NFBC draft sheet. Depending if it’s a category that values a high number (BA, HR) or a low number (ERA, WHIP), you will have to switch the greater than sign to a lesser than. Also, it’s an array formula, so you’ll have to hit CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER for the forumla to work properly. Here’s the formula:

=SUM(1*(D2>=$D$2:$D$16))-(SUM(1*(D2=$D$2:$D$16))-1)/2

Yes, it’s a lot of work to just correctly handle ties. But it’s all about accuracy! Or at least making sure I win my leagues.

Very interesting. I haven’t been able to get enough people together to do an auction draft, but maybe next year that will happen.

My interests is in ranking of players. I use past averages of the winning totals to figure out the numbers needed to win each category. Then I use the projected stats Mr Schwartz posted and calculate what percentage each player offers in each category. I subtract BAvg, ERA and Whip from the needed number. Then I add up the percentages. I cube the BAvg and whip so smaller numbers hurt less without losing the sign. Still working out the kinks with ERA. Cubing works but it makes numbers too big if +/-1 from the numbers I am shooting for. With Y! leagues, I use IP as a % of 1250 to calculate importance of playing time.

It is probably best to just use the dollar system for ranking hitters with pitchers.

When drafting, a quick cut and paste shows what percentages are need for each category. This year, in 8 drafts, with either the 2nd pick, next-to-last or last, I had more time after the two quick picks to search for needs without being rushed.

Thanks again for the spreadsheets. I am an Excel novice and this should increase my learning curve.

Love the draft stuff. All of your info this preseason actually inspired me to start a blog of my own which I hope to keep updated daily throughout the season… http://bobsbaseball.blogspot.com/

Question though, does mlb.com have an acceptable use policy? I do use box scores from mlb.com as my basis for analysis and I also used some hit tracker data. I can’t find anything on usage terms, though.

Meta

The following are trademarks or service marks of Major League Baseball entities and may be used only with permission of Major League Baseball Properties, Inc. or the relevant Major League Baseball entity: Major League, Major League Baseball, MLB, the silhouetted batter logo, World Series, National League, American League, Division Series, League Championship Series, All-Star Game, and the names, nicknames, logos, uniform designs, color combinations, and slogans designating the Major League Baseball clubs and entities, and their respective mascots, events and exhibitions.